ONE OF THE SIGNS placed in Iron Mountain after Nancy Renkas disappeared in July 2016. The 47-year-old now has been missing for seven years. (Betsy Bloom/Daily News photo)

IRON MOUNTAIN — The Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office announced Monday that the 2016 disappearance of Nancy Renkas is now officially considered a homicide investigation.

“There is no evidence Nancy went missing of her own accord,” the office stated in a news release on the six-year anniversary of the date the Florence, Wis., woman reportedly was last seen. “The investigation has shown Nancy disappeared in peril and investigators now classify this as a no-body homicide investigation.”

While the release stated that “new information is regularly obtained by investigators,” it provided no further details. It ended with, “Nancy’s family has not forgotten her and neither will law enforcement.”

The Daily News was unable to connect with Undersheriff Aaron Rochon on Monday afternoon for additional information on the case.

Renkas’ children, Kaylyn and Joseph Renkas, said in an interview with The Daily News last summer their mother had gone to Iron Mountain on July 18, 2016, to buy supplies for a meal to celebrate the sale of the family’s campground in Pembine, Wis., but never returned home.

In 2018, then-Dickinson County Undersheriff Scott Metras and Detective Lt. Derek Dixon said Renkas last was seen about 12:30 p.m. July 18, 2016, in the parking lot outside Super One Foods. She left perishable groceries in her vehicle, indicating she believed it would be a brief trip, Metras said at the time.

A surveillance camera that day showed the 47-year-old Renkas getting into a white SUV in the parking lot at Midtown Mall in Iron Mountain that then headed east on U.S. 2.

The SUV driver was classified as a “person of interest” early in the investigation and was interviewed by both Florence and Dickinson County law enforcement, Metras said in 2018.

In an interview with The Daily News in July 2021, Louise Wender acknowledged the vehicle was her 2010 Lincoln Navigator. Renkas, the common-law wife of Wender’s late brother Mark Barker, had recommended they both check out a camper she’d seen in the Norway area, Wender said. Renkas’ children confirmed last year the family had discussed purchasing a camper in 2016.

Wender said in the 2021 interview they never located the camper, so after driving around, she returned Nancy Renkas to the Midtown Mall parking lot.

“She’s just innocent of any wrongdoing,” her attorney, Jeffrey Paupore, said in July 2021, adding “the only thing she’s guilty of is being with Nancy that day.”

Wender spoke up after Dixon testified during an online court hearing in August 2020 that she was a suspect in the case, when Wender unsuccessfully sought a protective order against another woman she claimed was harassing her on social media about the disappearance.

The Daily News did not publish her name at the time because she had not been charged in the investigation. But Wender and Paupore said last year her name had been so widely circulated as the suspect that they wanted to tell her side of the story.

Her Lincoln Navigator and iPhone were impounded for more than four years, until Dickinson County Circuit Judge Julie LaCost ordered they be released in April 2021 on the grounds the original search warrant didn’t include seizing the items.

Nancy Renkas was “fine — and I told investigators that –“ when Wender left her back in the Midtown Mall parking lot on July 18, 2016, Wender said in July 2021.

Nancy Renkas’ children, who now live in Missouri, could not be reached for comment Monday.

“I know there’s got to be somebody out there that knows something,” Kaylyn Renkas said in July 2021. “My brother and I struggle with this every day and July is especially painful for us because it reminds us of what could have been.”

“We’d like to get it resolved and find out what happened to our mom,” Joseph Renkas said in the same interview. “Just so we have closure.”

Anyone with possible information on the case is encouraged to contact the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office at 906-774-6262.